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Stagemomma brought this up in another thread, and I realised I really want to hear about how people have dealt with it.
If you and your partner both owned houses or apartments when you got together, what did you do? Or what if one of you owned a place that the other did not like?
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Me, I am surprised at the number of guys in their 30s or 20s who think they should get a place first and then a partner. Isn't she going to want an equal say in what house they buy?
OTOH, one of the things I find much easier about dating after 40 is that pretty much everyone has a place, and this makes living together much more fluid and flexible for experimentation, early on. Nobody has to give up their lease. But eventually, the two want to settle on one place, and how does that work? Do you redecorate? Sell both places and buy another?
Last edited by NilaJones; 11-12-2013 at 01:00 PM..
Stagemomma brought this up in another thread, and I realised I really want to hear about how people have dealt with it.
If you and your partner both owned houses or apartments when you got together, what did you do? Or what if one of you owned a place that the other did not like?
I am surprised at the number of guys in their 30s or 20s who think they should get a place first and then a partner. Isn't she going to want an equal say in what house they buy?
OTOH, one of the things I find much easier about dating after 40 is that pretty much everyone has a place, and this makes living together much more fluid and flexible for experimentation, early on. Nobody has to give up their lease. But eventually, the two want to settle on one place, and how does that work? Do you redecorate?
I sold my house, he kept his as a rental property and we bought one together. My house was perfect except for location, and his place holds its value because of location and would make a good retirement residence for us one day.
You keep it for the next 20 years, just for that purpose?
My ex, when he moved in with his now-wife, kept his apartment for two years. The first year, his cat lived in it alone, and he went over twice a day to feed the cat. After a year, he moved the cat in with him and future wife, but still kept the place.
A big chunk of why he and I broke up is that we make decisions at different speeds .
My girlfriend still has her apartment but she is practically moved in to my house because it is much closer to her work, more comfortable, and because I don't like leaving my dogs alone overnight. I was worried that she might not like my house, and even made a thread about it over 6 months ago:
It turns out that once everything got a coat of paint, some cosmetic changes were made outside, and a lot of furniture was replaced, she loves the place. We don't have any plans to move in the near future, and the plan is for her to let her lease expire and move in fully with me.
Thanks for the link, Chemistry_Guy. I love Taoist's suggestion in that thread that, if she needs you to replace the house you shared with your ex wife she may also need you to replace you car... and your peen .
It never occurred to me to worry about who someone bought their house with, in the past. I guess I have not been in that sit. Especially if it was a first home for both of them, the house may still hold a lot of emotional baggage. I am happy it all worked out for you two!
My wife moved into my house. She had a double which was a rental property, but that was sold as it was not in the greatest condition or the greatest area of town (and honestly would have taken forever to break even if we put money in to fix it up).
At first there were things she did not like about the house, but it was built in the 60's and was really in need of a lot of cosmetics work. (It had newer bones, 5 year old or newer windows, mechanicals, etc, but original kitchen, and the newest decor such as living room carpeting, window treatments, ugly paneling etc, was from the 80's).
We have basically remodelled the house together, and she feels much more like it is our home because of that.
I posted on this on the other thread, but when I met my fiance, I lived in an apartment I'd rented when my ex, who owned the house we'd lived in together, dumped me. Although in my upper 30s, home ownership was never a priority of mine. I'd moved around a bit, and worked in a fairly modestly paying career, and home ownership never really fit my budget or lifestyle.
My fiance had owned his home for about ten years, and owned another home previously to that. After we'd been together for about ten months, he asked me to move in to his house. My apartment had no lease, it was month-to-month, so it was easy from that standpoint. My fiance's house is an ongoing work in progress, a fixer-upper that he bought and tinkers with as he has the time and as the mood suits him. When I met him, he was in the process of gutting his dining room and DIY-ing a new tile floor for the dining room and the kitchen. He had also gutted the kitchen and remodeled it in his spare time before I met him. But very much a GUY'S HOUSE. Getting it to the point where it felt like a couple's home would have taken quite some time. Also quite small...good for one person, okay for two, more than two, nah. A month after I moved in, my fiance received military orders in another state, though, so we moved, and his dad is living in/taking care of his house while we are out of state. We are living in military housing, a nice, newly constructed stand-alone home...all kinds of space, and it's "ours," versus "his." We hope to start our family while we are here, and in that event, we will have outgrown the house back in our home state. My fiance also seems to be realizing how nice it is to live in a home where everything is completed and not in a constant state of being gutted/rehabbed, so he's toying with the idea of sinking some money into having his house worked on by professionals, and if we end up needing a bigger house when we're done here, selling it and getting another place. The house that was good for a single guy is okay for a newlywed couple (would be better if it weren't such a work in progress), but won't really do for two parents and a kid, if we get to that.
Honestly, I'm the daughter of a contractor, and grew up in a house that was constantly in some state of being remodeled. I'm okay at this point in life with living in a house that's ready to live in with minimal major construction projects, and not living in an episode of PBS's This Old House. While it's kind of cool to work on remodeling, etc., as a couple to make it "yours" together (my parents did it in the early 70s, gutting and totally renovating the house I grew up in), I've come to terms with the fact that it's just not my thing. I'm good with ready to live in. When I get seized by the "I must make the place mine" mood, I change the curtains, rearrange the furniture, and hang up some art.
I bought my house while still single, paid it off before marriage, and welcomed my then-bride into the house. She might not have chosen such a house were we to have first gotten married, and she never developed the householder's alacrity in turning house into home. But neither one of us was a "nester". When we divorced, she simply left, renting an apartment of her own. In my post-married life I've mostly lived alone (though this predicament shows promise of changing).
The usual real-estate advice is to marry first, then buy a house. But for persons whose material life outstrips their romantic life, such advice is impractical.
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